After a 24-year tenure at Rose-Hulman, Art Western, Dean of Faculty, is retiring. Western’s career spanned five presidents, four jobs, and several notable events in campus history. But after all, that, Western still remained true to his original passion: teaching.

“Nothing can match teaching, there’s no question about that,” Western said.

Mark Intihar took the crown as this year’s Annual RHA-sponsored poker tournament, held last Saturday in the Kahn rooms. For the 9th year running, Assistant Dean of Student Affairs Erik Hayes organized and ran the tournament, which started around 7:00 p.m. and didn’t finish until 1:30 a.m. the next Sunday morning. Hayes found this year’s tournament to be a success: “When you can get 100 or more people to come out on a Saturday night, when they could just as well be doing other things or hanging out in their rooms, is great!”

Japan Airlines Corp. filed for bankruptcy protection in Tokyo District Court on Tuesday due to its 2.32 trillion yen deficit. The airline alliance Oneworld, which contains JAL, American Airlines, British Airways, and 9 other airlines around the world, has stated that JAL will remain in the alliance. American and British Airways have both offered financial incentives to JAL to encourage JAL to remain in the alliance. Competitor Delta has floated plans to attempt to lure JAL from Oneworld to Delta’s SkyTeam. Like many U.S. airlines, JAL will continue to operate while restructuring. Bloomberg comments that all of the largest U.S. carriers except Southwest and American have indeed operated while under bankruptcy protection. In 2005, at least one-half of U.S. air traffic was conducted by carriers under bankruptcy protection.

This week, Rose-Hulman students were treated to a special series of events commemorating civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The events, which were organized by the President’s Office and the Diversity Council, began on Monday, January 18th, with a convocation in Hatfield Hall by award-winning Vigo County educator Katherine Utley.

For many nerds like me, Batman is the holy grail of awesome, beside Chuck Norris and Rambo. In the “Justice League of America” comics, Batman hangs with superheroes who could dominate the world in the blink of an eye. He acts as the moral conscience for the group, along with the Green Arrow, since they have no super powers and serve to remind the other heroes why people need them. He’s also the safeguard between the heroes and the regular people; now that Superman has gone rogue, Batman keeps a piece of kryptonite and has a plan to kill or disable every superhero who has ever crossed the pages of Justice League. Batman is the man in black, but every game based on him has been terrible; there have been about thirty games based on the caped crusaderand all have been mediocre or worse. Not one ever got the feel of how it was to really be the Batman.